Thomas Lohninger: Digital Public Infrastructure: Who Governs the Operation System of the Digitised Society

Digital Identity Systems are on the rise worldwide. While global majority countries already have ample experience with their pitfalls and human rights implications, Europe just concluded its big digital identity reform without any concern for the experiences of other regions. Thomas Lohninger works for Austria's biggest digital rights NGO epicenter.works and has shaped the 2,5 year negotiations for the new EU law. This presentation will showcase realistic use-cases of the technology from age verification, online identification, customer tracking up to replacing CAPTCHAs. We will discuss essentials safeguards that attempt to make such systems of government certified personal data exchanges less dangerous in a world of surveillance capitalism and rising authoritarianism. The speaker lead the NGO coalition of privacy watchdogs that advocated for strong human rights safeguards in the EU legislation. He since became Chair of the UN DPI-safeguards Governance Working Group, advises the EU Commission on the technical specification of the new system, is in the Jury of the German government about their Wallet implementation. This talk tries to bridge the technical, legal and social implications of such systems and how society might be shaped by what some are calling the operating system of modern society.